


Isolation

by TearoomSaloon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Body Worship, Comfort Sex, Eventual Fluff, F/M, First Time, Insecurity, Loss of Virginity, Slow Build, Smut, Touch-Starved, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-05-18 17:51:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5937457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TearoomSaloon/pseuds/TearoomSaloon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had cut off the comfort of touch when she was small. It was preservation to hate the feeling, she told herself, a way to keep a weakness at bay. Then why did she feel hungry to graze his skin, to touch him the way a starving animal prepared for a feast?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Malnourished

She had been alone all her life.

All of her recalled life, anyway. Touch was what she associated with the desert wind, whipping coarse sand against her skin. Touch was what the metal did to her calves when she wasn't being careful, the gutted graveyard scratching her, skinning her shins. Blood oozed in pinpricks before being covered in dust and sweat. She had many tiny scars from her brash dismissal of her body.

Touch was what her back did to her bunk, the surface never comfortable or warm. She slept cramped at night, stomach growling, fingers freezing. The desert was harsh and raked at her constantly. She grew to loathe having to touch anything, hating the feeling of foreign things against her flesh.

Which was why she ripped so violently away from Finn. Touch was a little demon and she had no desire to feel someone else's skin near hers. She didn't have enough time with her parents. She never grew to accept contact. She was repulsed by the idea of _touch_.

It made things all the more confusing when her mind was being touched without her permission, causing her to reel and shake. She hadn't been aware that it was possible to feel fingers in a place that wasn't physical, but she did, and she hated him for it. Hated that he opened a new avenue of her disgust.

She could sense that in him too, though, his abhorrence to touch. Where she had been alone, family surrounded him, but he felt the same way as she. An unnecessary evil, another annoyance in the day. But he tolerated touching others as long as they did not touch him—she refused it both ways.

Touch made her feel…hollow. Like she had missed something crucial in her development. It was a long ache that she could not soothe on her own, and for that reason she turned it into an aversion in preservation. Hurts made her weak, and this was a hurt she could go without, unlike hunger and fatigue.

He kept touching her though—poking and prodding at her mind when she was far away. If it didn't mean seeking him out, she would have sliced him in half, distraught and angry at his constant need to bother her. He knew she hated it, or else he wouldn't be so keen to continue. But she cracked, and she vanished away from Luke, tearing herself into some new place in the galaxy to search for her tormentor.

It was certainly a nuisance when she got stuck with him.

On some backwater planet with the living Force coursing steadily through native life, they had gotten trapped, the disaster of it interrupting a heated clashing of blades and half-hearted taunts. She wasn't sure why she couldn't cut into him with words—maybe it was because, with his mask off, she could see herself in his eyes. He could see himself in her, too. The same creatures only reversed.

A vornskr twice the normal size sprung from the undergrowth in an ambush, knocking him down and tearing easily into his side. He severed the head from the body in a graceful arc, but he hadn't been quick enough to prevent the damage, deep holes chewed in the space over his ribs. He would bleed out before she got the chance to finish him herself.

Not that she would.

"You're going to have to hold still." Her voice was unfamiliar in her ears, but not as foreign as the scene below her. He had looked weak before, but never vulnerable with the fear of a child in his eyes. He must have known his life might slip.

"Why, so you can make the wound worse?" It was a frail jab, blood in his mouth.

"So I can heal you."

She didn't like the prospect. Healing meant touching, but not healing meant death. He was her enemy, but in another life he may have been a friend. She was never very spiritual, but she liked the idea of her soul having journeyed other places before here, and his felt tied with hers.

He let her remove the thick layers of his garb, unable to help, his own blood filling up a lung. He must have been dizzy, so dizzy with the loss of oxygen. She doubted he would have allowed this otherwise.

With her hands on his skin, she reached out to the Force, asking for assistance in her healing process. It had been months since the last time she practiced this skill and she feared she might lose him—a thought that bounded around in her chest. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

His body was smooth below her calloused fingers, muscle curled under soft flesh. Steadily she knit him back together, feeling his cells reproduce and the liquid in his lungs filter out. He coughed once, and her hands burned from the contact. She hated it still, she reasoned, even as it tugged a lightness in her heart.

She watched over him for the night in the tiny cabin she'd been calling home for the past week. He was groggy and upset about the circumstances but accepted his fate. She knew he would have done the same had she been the one injured. They were bitter rivals, but losing someone who could be called an equal was a situation neither wanted to encounter. His humor was dark and she found herself chuckling more times than she should have been.

"Is anyone going to come looking for you?" she asked as she built a fire. The woods were cold at night, the climate matching that of a temperate rainforest. She was used to the chill.

"No." He nestled down into the blankets she'd given him, his long legs taking up the whole of the couch. "They never care much what I do."

Small talk with him felt both uncomfortable and familiar. "Not even Hux?"

"Especially not Hux." He watched her quietly with an intensity that made her skin prickle. "You have friends, though, they must know you're gone."

"They _might_ know I'm missing at this point, but not to where. I left in the middle of the night star systems away from them."

He cocked his head. "Someone must care for you."

"I am the only one who takes care of me."

"Up until now, I would have echoed that statement."

She shot him a look. "I'm not cruel enough to have let you die."

"Why did you hunt me?"

She turned branches over in her hands, sap sticking to her fingertips. The sensation was unbearable. "You kept reaching out and I wanted to make it stop. I don't like being touched and nor do you."

"And are you satisfied with the outcome?"

In truth, no. Touching had made it worse. Now he was in her head and on her skin. A stone in her stomach said it was only a matter of time before he was on her breath too. "For now."

He laughed, his eyes mocking. "There are only so many ways I can please you."

She wasn't surprised that he disappeared with the dawn, not a trace of his presence in her space when she woke. Knowing they would cross paths again, she gathered up her things and left the planet in haste, returning to her master. Luke knew why she had gone—he seemed to know the reason behind everything she did—and his lecture on behavior was more relieved than disappointed or angry. She hated when she worried him.

"There will come a point where you stop running after him," Luke said on the river's bank. She was stood in the middle of the rushing water, her task to slow the current in the space around. He was baiting her concentration.

She didn't blink. "What happens then?"

"Then he starts running to you."

Laughing without mirth, the rolling waves began to cascade around her knees, pushing her unsteady for just a moment. "There are few universes in which he will chase me. This is not one of them."

This was one of them to her chagrin.

As she was running a raid in an outer-rim territory, he rose up out of shadows in a tiny hallway in which she had hid. She cursed herself inwardly and outwardly, having no good explanation for how this tall raptor of a man managed to conceal himself in a space so small. Raven-haired and eagle-sighted, he had no trouble locating her and dragging her from her concealment with the laziest flick of his wrist. She snarled before drawing her blade, throwing an ash-smudged taunt in his direction. It was unsettling to see him without a mask in the open. Before there had been no need, but here he should have had it on, should have veiled more of his person.

"Here to finish the job I couldn't?" she spit, waiting tensely for him to ignite his lightsaber, to charge, to hiss—something that wasn't this thickly predatory look.

"There were two things you failed to achieve, though they cannot both coexist in completion." He tilted his head slowly, meaningfully, and the way his lips parted was more intimidating than being at the mercy of death. "I can finish one for you, but which one is your decision."

"Kill or be killed?"

He shrugged. "All is fair in love and war."

The interpretation of his sentence was up to her, his words pattering like slow raindrops on her skin. She hated it—hated the gradual downpour.

He stepped closer and she did nothing to move, waiting until he was a breath away to disengage her yellow blade. Her teeth were grit, lips in a snarl. He raised his hand but touched her not, knowing well he would lose his fingers; that much was visible in her mad eyes. Rested against his palm was a chain, a strange cube dangling in the air.

"My uncle will know the purpose this serves," he said carefully, holding it out so she could take it without brushing him, "but it is only for your eyes. Do not wait too long to open it."

He walked past her and she let him, having realized he was alone. It would take all her discipline not to race off in the direction of her master the moment the black robes disappeared from sight.

* * *

 

"It's a holocron."

She had waited the appropriate amount of time to show the strange gift to Luke, but had not told him how or where she had acquired it. She was sure he already knew.

"Holocron?"

"A way for Jedi to store important data, but this one is new, cruder than the traditional design. It will open to the Force."

He held it delicately out and she took it graciously, nervous of what could possibly be inside. "Thank you."

"I think this is the point where I am supposed to warn you about your inevitably rash decision, but it won't do any good, I can tell that from your eyes." He smiled sadly. "It's not your responsibility to bring him home."

She nodded once, tucking the holocron into her robe. "I know."

In her small room, she meditated on the small cube until it glowed a faint blue, spilling its contents into the dim air, reaching to the walls, the ceiling, basking the space in a light like stars.

The spread before her was a map, wide and expansive, reaching across all of space. It flitted and shifted its focus to a sickly green planet somewhere in the mid-rim, a world she did not recognize. She didn't bother to learn the name even as she plugged the coordinates into her ship's nav computer, knowing that in a matter of hours she'd hear it roll from his lips.

It annoyed her that she was aware of where to land before even coming out of hyperspace, the image of a towering black monolith imprinted in her mind. The face of it was carved into deeply. And, as she descended the gangway, she saw a faint light emanating from the meters-tall doorway, obscured only by the dark frame of his cloak.

"I come here to meditate," he told her after she ascended the torturous number of steps to the mouth of the structure. "Though I haven't gotten away in a long while."

"What is this place?"

"An ancient temple belonging to an ages-lost people. The planet has been abandoned for centuries, I can promise we're alone."

Alone. How she always had been. But if there were two of them, they couldn't be alone.

"How did you find such a world?"

"Through the Force—the same way you've been stalking me down."

"I haven't been—"

He rolled his eyes, not amused. "If you have to lie to yourself to sleep at night, that is a problem of yours, not mine."

She sulked the rest of the way into the belly of the temple. "Is there a reason you're bringing me here?"

"I brought you nowhere; you came on your own accord."

"You told me to make the choice for you, this isn't a vacation."

"Coming here was the choice."

She halted in her tracks, him stopping a foot ahead. What a _fool_ she had been. A desire to fly from this place kicked hard at her stomach. She almost gave in. "Will I be upset to know what I've chosen?"

His eyes were bored but he wore the frayed edges of a smile on his lips. "No."

She was toured through several rooms, taken down two staircases and up three more. The whole temple was carved entirely out of black stone, glowing red embers of self-lighting materials gathered in crevices and on the walls, illuminating the space. It was beautiful in a splintered way, the hallowed halls hollow and echoing with the past and present, their voices low under high ceilings.

He brought her into a grand room designed for accepting company, ushering her easily to a long sofa. Dust did not cling to the surfaces here, and she caught herself wondering if he'd cleaned beforehand. Her musings were interrupted by the warm smell of caf and a cup being set before her.

"I want to start this slowly," he said softly as he sat beside her at a respectable distance, his own mug resting daintily in his large hands. The white of the stone nicely juxtaposed the black of his clothes. "Rushing would be careless. And I…am at a loss for how. Do you have a suggestion?"

She took a sip of her drink. "You can start by telling me what the implications of my choice are."

"You hate something, I hate something. We should overcome it."

She frowned, an idea forming in her head. "Together?"

"It would certainly be easier that way."

"I've never…" Here it went, the deep, dark plunge. "Never touched another outside of necessity. Have you?"

"Not in long years. I cannot say I've missed the feeling."

"Do you want me to touch you?"

He set down his mug and removed his gloves. His hands were smooth, his skin alabaster. His knuckles were prominent on his thin fingers, his palms almost a square shape. Blue veins on the backs, his hands were distinctly masculine but posh—the hands of someone who had known no harsh physical labor.

She took his right hand when he held it out to her and she could feel her nerves shake in protest. Touching was a comfort she did not need, should never cave to, a weakness not well worn. But her body craved this; her heart ached to know the heat of another no matter how much her brain protested.

Her thumb drifted smoothly across his fingers and he let her trace the lines of his palm. His posture was as rigid as hers, and she was afraid they would both crack and weapons would ignite, but it remained quiet in the room when her fingertips grazed the inside of his wrist.

"Your fingers are rough." He did not look up to meet her eye, instead keeping his gaze trained to her movement across his vulnerability.

"I am a scavenger, I work with my hands. The desert is a harsh mistress."

"You misunderstand. I think I like the sensation."

"The sensation of my callouses?"

"The sensation of your past on your present. How the way you've been shaped sticks to your skin, like a coarse river carving a canyon."

She turned his hand over and began to draw patterns on the back of his palm, focused on notches and tendons that decorated him. "It is strange to touch you." She could see life pulsing in his veins, able to feel the thrum of his heart when she pressed a finger to the blue line. "Is it as awful as you remember?"

"I never said I had bad memories of touches." He shivered when she drew a thin strip that inched under his sleeve. "If I were to say this is enjoyable, would you allow me to do the same?"

"You wanted to go slowly."

"This is slowly. May I have your hand?"

She gave it to him reluctantly, fearing the worst.

But it wasn't the worst. It was almost…pleasant to feel his heat closed around her fingers. He used both of his hands to explore hers, holding her palm up for inspection, grazing both the tops and bottoms of her fingers at the same time. He was uncharacteristically gentle with her skin, but she thought maybe this was exactly in line with whom he was. He had been forever gentle with her, now he was just showing it off physically.

He laced the fingers on his right hand with her left, studying the result. His fingers engulfed the back of her hand, reaching down almost to her wrist. "I never really took notice of how small you are," he said quietly, rubbing his thumb along hers. "Is this worse than you imagined?"

"No, it's not."

"Are you pleased or displeased with the revelation?"

She wasn't sure. Part of her was disgusted that this wasn't revolting her to the point of fleeing here, another part upset that it was with _him_. The last third was content with the feeling of his skin against hers, however limited the contact.

"Shall I take your silence as a sign to stop or go on?"

Keeping silent, she took his other hand in her free one, curling her fingers around his, trying to memorize the feeling of fire that spread in thin lines down her arm. "How fast is too fast?"

"Faster than necessary."

"Is this a need, then, if it's necessary?"

He spoke with a voice deep as an ocean, dark blue and turbulent. "You can feel it too, can't you? You've felt it for months now. So have I."

"Am I allowed to touch your face?"

Carefully, as though they were both made of thin crystalline glass, he brought one of her hands to the sharp planes of his countenance, letting her fingertips brush his lips before removing his hand from hers. His eyes fluttered closed as he sealed his fate.

His skin was soft but his lips were a little chapped. He had so many moles and she pressed her index finger lightly to each one, counting to herself as she went, drawing abstract constellations on his skin. His nose was crooked as if it hadn't set right after a break, divided by the line of red that ran from his brow to his cheek. The damage she had inflicted so easily all those months ago. The skin of his scar was thin like tissue paper, taut and shiny in a striped way. The redness leaked out of the neat line, some parts more faded than others, other spots purple where the whole was red. He grimaced when she traced it slowly. It had a texture like peach fuzz.

"Does it still hurt?"

"It never hurt. It's always been numb. But I do not like being reminded of its existence."

"Are you embarrassed by it?"

His eyes opened and she realized exactly how close to him she had edged, their foreheads mere inches apart. "I am not embarrassed by the punishment of my loss. I am repulsed by how it looks; it cuts me in half."

"Appropriate, isn't it? You're split between two sides."

"As if I hadn't already collected enough metaphors to tack on my door."

She couldn't help the chuckle that tumbled from her mouth, relieved when his lips twitched into the briefest of smiles. When his gaze drifted to their interlocked fingers, she drew her free hand across his cheekbone, over the shell of his ear, and into the black waves that settled like long grasses on his head. His hair was softer than she was expecting and it caught her a little off guard, urging her to lose her hand deeper into his locks.

"Would this be…" she began to ask, drawing him closer.

"A little too fast," he mumbled against her lips. His breath was hot and she found herself more than accepting of the idea she had absentmindedly proposed. Despite his voiced refusal, he let her continue her plan of action, tilting his head to allow for a better angle.

The kiss was a little sloppy, that much she picked up on immediately. Understandable; it was her first and she wasn't completely sure what she should be doing. He seemed to know only as much as she and the kiss stayed chaste.

It still left her breathless.

"I don't think we can turn back now," he said softly. His brow was pressed to hers, as though he were using her to support himself upright. She could feel the growing hunger in her stomach mirrored in his chest, a need of childhood never satisfied, the bond and trust in another neither had formed. She'd tasted his lips—there was no returning to a time when she was unfamiliar with his intimacy.

"Going ahead will not be slow." Her fingers were on the nape of his neck, his identity and her enmity towards him lost and forgotten outside the room. "Do you still want to—?"

"Yes, otherwise I may combust."

He kissed her harder, clueless, his lips bruising. His hands were on her face, across her scalp, tugging loose the knots atop her head. No one but her mother had ever run fingers through her hair and she gave willingly into the feeling. How had she denied herself these sensations for so long?

Pulling back, he pushed her fringe from her face, smoothing a lock behind an ear. His gaze dropped low, eyes sunk deep in a thirst she'd never seen directed at her. It was meant for women with gorgeous smiles and perfect bodies, not a wiry little desert rat of a girl made of sharp angles and bitter teeth.

The word _beautiful_ escaped his mouth as he drank her in like a potion.

"You can't mean me."

"I mean you." He sucked in a breath, hiding a clue before it emerged. "Tis but a lust, nothing more, nothing less." A chuckle, and then: "You're atrocious at hiding your surprise. Even scavengers have their charms."

"Do you intend to do that here?"

"It depends; do you?"

She hesitated. This was new for the both of them, if not for the inexperienced kiss, she could tell from the way his chest shook and how his eyes had no clue where to focus attention. She had never known carnal pleasure, why change that now? Why break the dam so she could suffer alongside her friends when they bemoaned the many months it had been since they'd known a woman? This would not be more than a one-time thing, not with who they were.

Reaching for his collar, she began to unfasten his robes, a new want cropping up to see the pale skin of his neck, his shoulders, his chest. He interrupted her after the first of his layers had been stripped. "You want this on the sofa?"

"Would you really prefer the floor?"

He stood and left his discarded cloak behind. Taking her hand, he pulled her up and led her slowly from the room. She liked how small her hand was in his, how his fingers curled and squeezed lightly around hers. In another life she had been convinced they were friends, but now she had mind to believe they were lovers, tender and gentle, made full in the presence of their other half. That must have been a better existence—no fighting between them, no need to hiss and attack from opposite sides of a battlefield. She wondered if they had had children, or if their affair had been brief. Did they grow old together, or were they forced to part before they had fallen deeply in love?

If they were not careful in this life, she could see how they would grow together, dependent on the other's touch. Maybe that's what he wanted, maybe not. Opposite but equal. Whole.

Stopping in the middle of a grand bedroom, he allowed her to continue the quest to undress him, hands fumbling on clasps and buttons. She was rapt to know how he put himself together in the mornings without wasting an hour on his clothes. The thought drained away as the layer covering his torso fell, exposing to the dim light the planes of his chest. He was smooth but muscled exactly as remembered, coils and hard lines shifting under the skin of his stomach as he took a shallow breath. He had never been this bare before another, not in this context.

"Where should I start?" Her voice was low, lower than she'd intended.

He took her hands in a feather-light grip and placed them atop his shoulders, his trapezius muscles firm but not rigid. Tense, she noted when she dug her fingers into the lateral portion of the muscle walls. He seemed to almost bite back a whine when she pressed harder, the tissues sore. Too tall for her to continue this exploration on her tiptoes, she slipped her touch across his shoulders, down the blooms of his deltoids, across his forearms, and back to his hands, swirling her thumbs on his palms.

"You seem nervous." She did not look up from her gaze fixed on the middle of his chest, not wanting to reveal the flush spreading on her cheeks. This was also the first time she'd had another this exposed before her.

"A little." He brought her hands back to his chest. "But it's not bad."

She drew circles over his pectorals, tracing invisible lines. "No?"

"No." Leaning down to kiss her, he began to remove the garments that hid her from his touch. This kiss was better, more confident, and her layers fell as she ran her hands down his sides, stopping at his hips.

"Nervous?" he teased, the joviality in his tone strange but welcome.

"Not on your life." Her hands locked in his hair with the next kiss, half-bare bodies pressed together, heat curling in her stomach and dipping lower, the sensation of him on her wonderful and foreign.

"Why have we starved ourselves for so long?" he asked as he nudged her knees against the edge of the bed, laying her down before caging her with his arms. His mouth was hot on her neck and she surprised herself when her breath hitched.

"We're too afraid of being vulnerable, of being weak."

"Is this a vulnerability, or a strength?"

"Both, neither, I don't know."

He stood from his hunched position and began to untie her pants, sliding the fabric down her legs. "I confess I haven't a clue how this works. Any of it."

"Just…" She sat up, watching the way his gaze immediately locked to her swaying breasts. "Don't draw blood and I think you'll do fine."

"Yeah?"

She weaved a hand into his hair and drew him closer to the center of her legs. "Yeah."

His breath tickled her senses, his tongue hesitant. He pressed a kiss to her clit, stirring a sharp want up her spine. "Do you know what you like?"

"No."

"Fresh slate." He chuckled and tentatively started with her entrance, running his tongue up one side then the other, movements a little shaky and unsure. But determined, oh she could feel his determination rolling in waves as his hands carved trails down her thighs, trails of fire, trails of hot coals. It wasn't good—not the way she thought it would be—and instead made her shiver in anticipation, waiting so impatiently for something she knew not. All she knew was that it was not happening quickly enough and she felt tortured under him, as if he intended to cause her suffering.

She rocked against him unintentionally and it seemed to spur him on, making him increase his pace, tongue lapping in and out, the pleasure unbearable. Fingers curling painfully tightly into the bed sheets, a hitch disconnected and she fell off the side of the world, disappearing into a white nothingness. When she returned to her senses, she found his hands in hers, his eyes wide, almost frightened.

"You screamed. Is everything—"

"Great, everything's great." She pulled him back to her, tasting herself on his lips. Part of her wanted something more from this interaction, more pieces, more touching. Another wanted to lie beside him and kiss until her mouth was sore. She liked the feeling of it more than she wished she did, slowly loving how it made her breath short and her stomach full of flutters. He was nothing but a lover now, his sins forgotten in this hallowed space. They were scientists experimenting on each other, sick and in need of a cure.

Rolling him onto his back, she drew a line down his stomach with her lips, biting and sucking at his alabaster skin. A hungry beast in her ribs took great pleasure in marking him with red patches that identified him as hers. He was spoken for by the roses blossoming from his throat to his hips. She was careless when she removed the last of his clothes, eager to know, to feel—

What an intimidating organ.

She didn't know the first thing about how it worked.

"Tight, but not too tight," he said as he propped himself on his elbows. He was looking down at her in a mix of awe and unworthiness, as if he didn't believe this reality. Good, neither did she.

She wrapped her fingers around him, unsure of how to proceed. His hand covered hers and he demonstrated, knowing his body far better than she knew hers. His eyes shut and he settled back down against the sheets, groaning especially loudly when she ran her tongue down his length. The creature in her chest grew excited at the sound, amazed that it could do things like _this_ with the act of touching. He was lost in pleasure and she was the cause. Her. She could make someone feel good, feel less alone.

Right when she felt him close to the same edge she fell off, he stopped her, pulling his hands through her hair. His eyes were heavy and glazed with lust, his mouth red, chest flushing. He pulled her up and flipped her under him, spreading her legs so he could nestle between them. He kissed her, cupping her breast, running a finger across her folds. She whined helplessly into his mouth.

"Are you ready?" he asked before running his tongue around the shell of her ear.

She nodded, fingers curled into his hair.

He was big and she wasn't prepared for his size. It hurt—hurt like a scrape—and she tensed, holding back a sharp hiss of pain. She had no desire to give up on this, on him, but the _pain_. Her world was on fire.

"We don't have to—"

"No. Don't stop."

He kissed her brow and buried himself to the hilt. Tears welled in her eyes but she grit her teeth, a sudden need to please him outweighing the fear of being rubbed raw. He was nothing to her, but in this moment, he was everything. His chest was her sky and his eyes were stars. He lost his grip on his controlled speed and went faster, the pain receding into pleasure. A long moan was raked from her throat and he ducked to kiss her neck, her chest, filling her to the brim.

He came too quickly and they were robbed of a chance to try another position. Shaking, he fell to the sheets on top of her, exhausted, his face nuzzled in the crook of her neck.

"Rey." His voice was soft but her name called her back to the reality of who they were, _what_ they were.

Instead of grimacing and leaving in the shame she knew she ought to feel, she brought a hand around to stroke his back. "I'm here."

"Was touching as bad as you feared?"

She scooted down so her face was level with his and kissed him. Kissing was something she decided she liked quite a lot. "Not at all. I don't think I'd want to touch a lot more people, but this was nice."

With a great effort he moved off her and onto his side, an arm fast around her waist. "It was _just_ nice?"

"We can do better."

She could tell from the look he gave her that they would be at this again like starved animals in a matter of hours. The thought shivered like a chill down her spine and she curled into him like a nesting doll.

They had been nothing to each other but passing souls on a wide sea, but a spark had caught fast on a wooden deck, burning swiftly and fiercely. He was not good, but he could be, and she did not love him, but she could grow to. By touching, they had cast the first stone onto a dusty battlefield. It was only a matter of time before the war ended in a more affectionate tangle of sheets, hearts beating together, matching rhythm with a marching drum.

 


	2. Sated

Starved animals at a feast never remembered their napkins or their table manners. Starved animals at a feast downed the wine and hadn't a moment to savor their food for the taste, plates licked clean and utensils forgotten. Starved animals begged for seconds, thirds, and continued to plead until nothing but bones remained.

They were nothing if not starved animals at a banquet, a gala, a grand hall decked to the nines for a holiday gathering.

After the first night of discovering the benefits of touching, they grew into the feeling of never wanting to stop. She awoke first, remembering immediately where she was and whom she was with. It was he with his leg thrown over her hip, his dark hair drenching the pillows. He snored, but the sound was soft enough that she'd been undisturbed until her internal clock urged her awake.

Not even a full day ago and she would have sprung away and run from her placement here, from waking up to another person so _close_ to her space, to her skin. But they had touched openly, hungrily, and buried in his body heat she would gladly stay.

One of his eyes split open not long after the sunlight had begun to tickle her back. He let out a sigh first before nuzzling closer to her, pressing his head into the hollow space below her jaw.

"None of this means anything off the planet," his low voice said softly against her skin.

"None of this meant anything to begin with."

"Liar." He nibbled at her throat, drawing a shiver down her back. "You've felt it too, same as I have. And that's why none of it can mean anything away from here."

"But while we're here?"

He rolled her onto her back, easing himself on top of her. She could feel his erection hot against the skin of her stomach. "I want to learn your body, know it better than my own."

It was better the second time, maybe close to fantastic by the third. The rush it gave her made her lightheaded and dizzy. The entire day, that _entire_ day, was wasted on sex. If there was any portion to touching she should not have sworn off, it was this. The act itself was carnal and raw but she felt warmed and full by the time they were both a tangle of sweat and heavy breathing. Her throat was getting sore from all the moans he dragged from her chest and her jaw ached badly from a new magnetic need to please his cock with her tongue. He came apart into jagged fragments when she took him into her mouth and it was an effort to make her let go. The sounds he made, the pleasure _she_ was responsible for…it was a heady concoction, a power trip that fed her veins.

Perhaps touch wasn't the demon she made it out to be.

They parted on the second morning, needing to return to their respective masters without raising too many suspicions. She kissed him hard, harder than she should have for someone so against the idea of doing any of this outside the given context. Someone supposed to be repulsed entirely by what he was.

"I get to summon you next time."

"Back to here," he said against her lips, "I'm not going anywhere near my uncle."

Luke raised an eyebrow when she returned to his care. It hadn't occurred to her that her neck might look like she'd taken a beating, and he knew exactly from where all her red and yellowing spots came.

He didn't chide, didn't scold. "Did he trick you into something?"

"No. I was foolish in my own right."

"He didn't hurt you?"

"No. He was gentle with me." She swallowed her guilt. "He's always been gentle with me."

"It's not your job to do this. It's not on your shoulders to bring him home."

"You're right. This is his choice to make."

It was his choice to come back when she called a month later. Her skin had been tingling since they parted. Finn had brushed her shoulder with his hand once and the interaction sent her reeling. Had it only worked that one time? Could she no longer stand touching again, or did she only accept his skin on hers? She had to know, would die if she never learned.

He came willingly and met her at the monolith's mouth, not uttering a word of protest when she took his hand in hers, not a sound of discomfort when she walked too close to him. _It's just lust_ , he told her when he stripped off her clothes and laid her softly on the bed. Just lust when they proceeded to do nothing more than kiss for a half hour, hands and fingers drifting across cheeks and necks, never dipping below the collarbone. Only lust when he took her so slowly, so tenderly, his eyes never leaving hers.

"I have a question," she said once her mind had stopped its departure from reality. They were four visits deep now; four times had slunk from their training to touch. To feast on this sensation once so loathed. She lay atop him, her face parallel to the ivory skin of his middle, the fingers of one hand tracing the fissured scar of his bowcaster wound.

"I might have an answer." His eyes were teasing, amiable.

They had grown closer, more understanding of one another over the past few months. The bond they shared had opened to projections of lust and hungry thoughts. Once, only once, he'd sent his distress, a wave of fear that crashed heavily against her strength. She went down on both knees in the middle of sparring, bringing Luke to a halt across the makeshift training ground. It took all of her willpower not to bolt and aid. That was when her master began to look at her strangely.

"Can you see this ending in the near future?"

He sighed, his broad chest expanding and contracting beneath her wandering fingers. "The need, the want, or the reaction?"

"Any. Or all."

"No."

He stroked his hand through her hair when she moved to kiss his stomach, to nip at the tiny, tiny softness near his navel. It was one of few small places on his body not dominated by coiled sinew and sharp angles, the others being an incredibly little area at the absolute apex of his inner thighs and the lower curve of his otherwise-firm ass. She was all wire and bones; it was incredible to feel softness on his frame.

She bit at the spot, soothing it over with her tongue. "No?"

"No, I don't think—I feel like you're making fun of my belly when you do that."

"I'm not." His core was enormously powerful, like a pillar of stone, a pillar of steel. She smoothed her hands across his obliques, tracing how they fell away and created a valley between his strong abdominals. Her fingers ran down his sides to his waist and—oh, she'd forgotten here, the gentle curve of soft tissue on top of his hips.

"You are. Stop feeling up my love handles."

"I don't think these even qualify as love handles." She kissed one side and bit the other. "I like that you're not as rough or bony as I."

"Quit it."

She slid down, focusing her attention now on his thighs. His quadriceps were solid and curved, their shapes clear under his skin. But there was a spot on top of his abductor…

A whine fled his throat and his legs tensed. His hips rolled slowly and smoothly beneath her teeth.

"Am I still teasing you now?"

" _No_."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No, but we _just—"_ He hissed when her hands touched his over-sensitive cock. "Refractory period."

Right, that thing. It was something she didn't have, didn't experience. A foreign concept made for his foreign parts. With a sigh, she crawled her way back to his chest, curling around his body. It had grown cold on this strange planet and his excess heat was a blessing for the chilly nights.

"Why don't you think we'll stop anytime soon?" she asked, one hand now buried in his dark tangled hair. "We're in so much danger, doing this. Don't you loathe me?"

"To deny the self is difficult, especially of pleasure. Do you get pleasure out of this? Out of touching?"

"Yes."

"Then there is your answer. I won't deny myself quicker than you will."

"But do we still hate each other?"

"That's up to you to decide."

 

The sixth visit was different from the very start. She had craved his skin for two months, having been isolated in her training by Luke. He had decided, after one more bout of crippling weakness accidentally inflicted by his nephew's own fear, it was best to guard her away from stray thoughts. They had no contact, no touch—physical or mental—for two months. She felt as though she were starving herself, her body trembling from hunger for his hands upon her waist. It would have been a repulsive thought had they not…She didn't know.

She waited on the ground as his ship descended, waiting with shaking hands as he appeared from its mouth, heavy boots clanking on the metal gangway. Reaching her hands up to his face, he lowered himself to kiss her, softly, as if burning. Kissing had gotten easier, better over the visits. But none of their encounters had started like this, with tenderness.

"I missed you," he said almost inaudibly into her hair.

"You're not supposed to, that was part of the rules."

"Well I did. Would you prefer I lie?"

She shook her head, bending into the curve of his body, her arms finding their way around his neck.

He chuckled and the sound was sweet upon her ears. "You missed me, too."

"I'm not afraid to lie."

Their fingers laced as they continued into the temple's entrance. He pulled her into a kiss halfway to their regular chambers, pressing her body against the wall, trapping her with his weight. He only let her go when her lips were swollen and red.

"We're heading somewhere we shouldn't be," she said softly.

"When you made your first decision is when this path got set in stone. Are you regretting your choice? Now that there's danger involved?"

"There was always danger." She squeezed his fingers. "The emotions are new."

"They're not new—they're fuller now, more developed."

"But to answer, no, I do not regret my decision."

He nodded and pulled her into his side. "Good."

They were slow to undress this time. Outer layers discarded, she sat upon the bed with his head in her lap, carding her hands through his hair. He was weary from training, weary from some task he wouldn't let her know about. She accepted his sore muscles and aching limbs, braiding patterns into his soft hair before unraveling them and starting over again. It was a strange sight, the former beast in black settled like a kitten on the bedding. His body curled around hers, knees drawn behind her back, one hand stroking patterns on her thigh. He wanted as much contact as he could get without using more of his precious and fleeting energy.

"I've said it before, I know, but I like that your hands are callused and rough." His voice was small, nearly asleep.

"Yours are delicate."

"Smooth, not delicate."

"How is every part of you so soft?" she asked, lightly twisting a lock of his hair around her finger.

"I don't know. Are you trying to tell me you like the way my body feels?"

"You know that already."

"But you're saying it aloud. You have not once mentioned a fleeting appreciation of me without hiding a bigger question."

She took a slow breath and rested her hand at the nape of his neck. "Do you think it'll ever be possible to be lovers, you and I?"

"We are lovers."

"In the barest of senses."

He opened an eye, the iris a beautiful golden-brown, lighter than she'd come to recognize. "Are you asking if I could love you?"

"I'm not sure what I'm asking."

"Do you believe me _capable_ of such an emotion? Especially such a pure one as love?"

"I believe you have the capacity to do and be many things if you open yourself to them."

"Like how you opened yourself to my touch?"

"Yes."

"Would you…want that of me?" He looked away from her, focusing on the fabric of her pants. "Why would you want that of _me?_ "

"Because you were once nothing to me and now could become everything." Her fingers worked their way back into his hair and he closed his eyes, leaning deeper into her touch. "We've built…a comfort between ourselves. A comfort I don't want to share with another—don't think I could if I tried. I like how you feel beside me, in body and mind."

"What makes you think I'd feel the same?"

"I have the strangest sensation that we knew each other in another life. That we'd been proper loves, not bonded to factions of a war. I want to think we'd been able to grow old together."

He chuckled. "You think we're soulmates, is that it?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't be opposed to that reality. Would you?"

His hand curled against her thigh and he pushed himself into a seated position. His gaze was hard, a frown fast to form on his face. "What incredible wrong did I commit in touching you?"

The words sent slivers of ice through her chest. She brought her knees up, moving away from him, unwanted. "I'm sorry I asked."

"You've a true gift for misunderstanding me. And for interrupting a thought." His hands caught her waist and drew her close. He tucked her head neatly under his chin. "I've committed an unforgiveable act in the eyes of my master. A sin so great there is no hope of penitence."

"What sin?"

"I wouldn't be opposed to it either, the thought we might be carved out of the same star, that we might be meant for each other."

"But we're separated by loyalties. We can't do this."

"Someone could defect."

"I can't—"

"We don't have to make decisions yet." His lips brushed her ear, teeth nibbling on the shell. "I only wish to sleep now."

He still shivered when she removed his clothing. He hadn't stopped being bashful about his naked skin, quick to want to cover it, to dowse the lights, to focus her eyes elsewhere. It was the scars. He hated when she touched them. She wanted him to accept them, to grow to appreciate how powerful they made his skin seem, how much weight came with every burn and slice. This time she rejected his attempts at diversion and pressed him down onto the sheets, drawing her lips over the red-violet roar she'd slashed into his body.

"I don't enjoy your emphasis on my old injuries."

"I think they make you look strong." She kissed its widest stretch on his cheek, the thick and terrible line dividing his face. "You should appreciate your body more."

"I like it just fine without all the permanent damages."

"If we are going to be lovers in a true sense, you have to allow me to love you. Give me the opportunity to accept all of you, good and bad."

"And if I don't want to be your lover?"

"Then you're lying to me."

He huffed but stayed silent, allowing her to continue with her touches. Her fingers brushed over the lasting burn from their fight in the snow, following down his chest to the puncture marks the vornskr had left, the first time they'd come in contact skin to skin. She kissed every dark red line from the bowcaster bolt, etched out the carvings something clawed had made over his ribs, and flicked her tongue across one of the large lines descending on his shoulder. Then, she settled further down on his hips and nibbled the slight softness on his lower belly.

He leaned up on his elbows. "Are you really doing that again?"

"I'm giving attention to everything you dislike or are embarrassed by."

" _Why?_ "

"This started out by touching. How am I to know all of you if I can't touch all of you? You battled me through all my hand swatting and complaints at your fascination with my breasts."

His eyes narrowed. "But that made you feel good in the end—you _enjoyed_ that, _begged_ after the initial discomfort."

"Doesn't mean I'm not still insecure about them. Stop fighting and let me worship you."

He settled back into the pillows, covering his face with his hands. "It still feels like you're mocking me about it."

"Watch me, then."

She sucked a red mark onto the small softness of his otherwise hard-muscled stomach. It was silly to her that he'd be so upset about _this_ , an utterly insignificant amount of fat on his body. Of course he'd have some _somewhere_ , it wasn't as if he had been starved and malnourished all his life. She peppered all of his stomach with kisses, wanting him to see his insecurities were meaningless and unimportant to how she viewed him. He had gone out of his way to touch her, to give her a gift she'd avoided for years. She would go ten miles to show him he hadn't a reason to be ashamed.

He shivered when she moved down to his thighs, a small breath betraying his exterior distress.

"Is this okay?"

"Now you're asking permission?"

"I'm asking if I'm hurting you, not if you're comfortable because I know you're not."

"It feels…nice."

"Good."

She held his hips down, fingers smoothing over the soft spots on the tops. Her lips dragged across his inner thigh, licking and sucking marks onto his pale skin. She continued until the inside of his right leg looked like a rose garden, shifting to attend the other one.

His hands eventually found her hair, rubbing circles into her scalp. A long lave from her tongue brought a low moan to his lips, legs jittery with the constant new stimulation. He cried out when her mouth met the underside of his knee, senses no doubt tingling and alert to a newfound pleasure spot.

"I want to touch you like this," he said in a low, ragged voice. She'd been exploring him for well over a half hour, finding every single inch of skin that made him shake and moan.

"You won't last long enough tonight." He was incredibly hard, his cock poking her in the side as she hovered over a white-lined scar fissuring his pectorals.

"Soon."

She nodded, climbing down to sate him with her mouth. Soon. But not now. Not as he dissolved under her, when his groans turned to sobs and he scrambled to touch any part of her as the muscles in his abdomen contracted and he came, body quaking when she swallowed it down her throat.

"How do you feel?" she asked when she returned to his side, taking notice of how exhausted he looked. She had let that drag on too long.

He reached an unsteady hand to her and settled his head between her breasts when she lay down for him. He was heavy but his weight wasn't unpleasant against her skin.

"Cuddling isn't an answer."

"Loved." His fingers ran gently down her side. "I feel loved."

"This has never been just lust, has it?"

"Hunger at first, lust for a moment. Nothing so shallow now."

He woke her in the morning with his head between her thighs, fingers easing into her as his lips focused on her clit. Right before she could climax, he removed all pressure and buried himself inside her. It was overwhelming for having just woken up, made worse when his attention went straight to her breasts, cupping and licking and nibbling. They were so small, so _nothing_ on her body, but he teased and sucked her nipples until they were puckered and raw, and she came hot around him, muscles pulsing, clit swollen from the toying of his fingers.

She fell asleep beside him when he finished, pleasure overriding her need to start the day. She woke hours later to find him gone, missing from the planet's surface.

All was silent when she returned to Luke. He had stopped questioning her now, stopped even mentioning her disappearances. The guilt of it prickled on the back of her neck.

"Do you think this will continue for much longer?" he asked from a high stone. She was practicing levitating objects through the Force, seated on the forest floor with her eyes closed.

"It depends on the next time it happens."

"And what are the possible outcomes of that?"

He was annoyingly trying to break her concentration. "Either he declines me and we attempt to kill each other or he makes a decision."

"Which is?"

"Could be a variety of things. That's depended on him, not me."

 

The seventh call rang out in the deepness of a long night. She took her leave silently as always and shot through hyperspace to where she knew he would wait. Her stomach turned and twisted into knots, clenching tighter the closer she was. If he rejected everything, she hadn't a clue how the future would unwind.

She sprinted down the flight ramp, all but crashing hard against his chest.

His hands steadied her, held her shoulders upright as she collected herself. She sized him up and frowned.

"You look strange."

He wasn't in full black. Still darkly dressed, but in brown leathers and a dark grey shirt. His eyes had changed since she last saw him. They were bright, livelier than she'd ever seen.

"I look like I should."

"You look like a _pilot_."

"Maybe I'm supposed to be a pilot then." He kissed her forehead. "I want to come back with you this time."

"Come back, with _me?_ You remember that I'm under the tutelage of your uncle, correct?"

"Of course. Things have changed. I want to go home."

"Snoke will hunt you."

"The Knights won't listen to him if I depart and I know your forces have been dealing hell upon ours—or what used to be mine."

"And how do you expect to convince everyone you're no longer a brooding villain? Or even slightly better than you were."

"I'm a lot better than _slightly_ —"

"I know that, but only because I've watched you change. They haven't."

"Whatever happens, I won't leave so long as you'll stay beside me. My uncle trusts you. My mother likes you."

"And they do care about you."

"I know." His timbre was low. "I've hurt them for so long. It's time to stop and start healing."

She took his hand and led him up the gangway, stopping at the top to kiss his cheek. "What spurred this?"

"The thought of having to leave you after you'd imprinted on my heart. After you'd showed me it was possible to hurt less, yearn less."

"We showed each other."

"Isn't that the best part of it all?" He sat beside her in the copilot's seat. He seemed nervous but determined, righteous in his decision. "Even in this, we're on equal footing."

She liked to think she was at a slight advantage.

Luke seemed unsurprised to watch his nephew emerge beside his current pupil. An eyebrow raised but it was barely noticeable.

"I'm here on my free will," he told his uncle. "I want to fix myself."

Luke didn't smile or frown, his reaction neutral. "It's about time."

It was more nerve-wracking to approach the current Resistance base, to deliver Leia her son. Whatever happened, there was little she could do to lessen any blows to either party. It would be messy. It would take a lot of work. Her word was going against every word that damned him, and she had to show he was changing, becoming who he should have been from the start. Maybe not entirely—maybe he'd end up a little too grey, a little in the middle instead of approaching either pole.

She reached her hand out to him when they three landed, gripping his fingers tightly, nails digging into his skin. She exhaled, anxious, needing to touch him, to feel that he was actually there beside her. "Ben."

He tugged her closer against his body, pressing to her for comfort. This wasn't a dream. "I'm here."

Through fingers they were linked. Through skin and touch and teeth. This was nothing but a midway point, a brief stop in a longer journey. He wasn't perfect, but he was getting better, and she wasn't in love with him, but she was starting to be. He squeezed her fingers and she looked up into his lighter brown eyes, watching the grin spread across his marked face. She smiled back, ready to face the hardships ahead.


End file.
